Metallica "Death Magnetic"Its rare that an album release gets me this excited! But Metallica truly are the kings of metal! Ok…so St Anger was a huge letdown and its time for people to forget about it and to move on because Metallica are back & angrier than ever!. Where to start? I got my first taste of their latest work when they played Dublin on the 20th of August last, “Cyanide” was played live to an audience of 55,000 diehard fans & upon hearing it no one was disappointed.. Including me! After listening to the whole album “cyanide” still remains my favourite! I have always been a fan of theirs & they are the first band to get me interested in metal, thankfully their newer album sounds less Mtv than St Anger & is more like their earlier work “black album” - good news for sure! The riffs & hooks & indeed the lyrics all seem to have more structure & its clear there is a lot of jamming session influences. Songs like “all nightmare long” “that was just your life” have distinct master of puppets sound going for them while others sound more like load/re-load, as much as I want to go deeper into the new album I’m going to stop here because I don’t want to spoil any of it for the true fans.. After all it really has been a long wait! What I will say is you wont be disappointed & its clear Metallica rock even harder than ever - run out & buy it on September 12th!
Slipknot "All Hope Is Gone"I was never a hardcore slipknot fan but one or two of their songs did appeal to me so of course I wasn’t sure what to expect from their latest album, first off I have to say it made a huge impression on me! Its true they have already sold over 5 million albums so they must be doing something right. The single “psychosocial” is currently dominating the charts and the music video for the single is nothing short of brilliant. My favourite tracks off the album have to be “snuff” & “psychosocial”, “Gematria - the killing name” "Butcher's Hook" & “All Hope Is Gone” are all your standard slipknot soundtracks with lashings of thundering beats & riffs that will satisfy any true fan while the more mellow Stone Sour sounding “Snuff” & Dead Memories” will really appeal to anyone who likes good music. Overall the album seems very solidly written and mixed, slipknot have indeed achieved a heavier and more mature sound - one of the best albums of the year.
